This is a highly original study with fresh insights into many
aspects of Nietzsche's corpus, ranging from the second untimely
meditation on history and the unpublished "Truth and Lies" essay to
On the Genealogy of Morality. The aim of the book is
to provide the first systematic treatment of the animal in
Nietzsche's philosophy. The author wants to show "that the animal
is neither a random theme nor a metaphorical device, but rather
that it stands at the center of Nietzsche's renewal of the practice
and meaning of philosophy itself" (1). This involves Lemm in a
wide-ranging treatment of key motifs in Nietzsche's corpus,
including illuminating his views on culture and civilization,
morality and politics, history, forgetfulness and memory, and
truth. For her the human being is part of the continuum of animal
life, and, in part, she takes her inspiration from the pioneering
work of Margot Norris in her book Beasts of Modern
Imagination. In Norris the author finds a new approach to
culture that is "biocentric," that is, it is thought from the
perspective of "life." For Norris there is a biocentric tradition
of thought that includes Nietzsche and in which these
thinkers—Kafka is another example—do not create "like" the animal
or in imitation of it but, rather, "as" the animal, with their
"animality" fully alive and speaking. As Lemm acknowledges, this is
a contentious approach to problems of culture and civilization
simply because it is contesting the widespread Enlightenment and
humanist view that what makes culture distinctive is the way it
separates the human from the animal and sees culture
as the task of civilizing the human animal into a moral and
rational one. With this focus, however, on "life," this privileging
of humanity over animality is reversed and the human is given back
its repressed animality.

The critical question to ask is whether this is indeed an
"enlightening" move to make and whether it accurately captures what
is taking place in Nietzsche's philosophy with respect to questions
of humanity and animality. Lemm is aware of the dangers of her
perspective and endeavors to steer an approach that avoids the main
ones, including the "biologism" of a materialist approach and the
anthropomorphism of a spiritualist approach. For her the error of a
biologistic approach is that, while taking into account the
intimate relationship of human and animal life, it fails to provide
an exegesis of the meaning and significance of culture except in
terms of survival and self-preservation (not core values in
Nietzsche, as is well known). The spiritualist approach cannot do
justice to the physiology of life, and here Lemm contends that
Nietzsche's reliance on physiology does not denote a crude
scientism—the application of mechanical or chemical causality to
inert matter—but, rather, requires a genealogy that is able to
capture the "spiritual historicity" expressed in physiology.

Throughout the work Lemm skillfully negotiates these various
antinomies and shows herself to be an astute and mature reader of
Nietzsche. There is an abundance of genuinely fresh insights
running throughout the text, and even when she deals with seemingly
all-too-familiar material, such as the second untimely meditation
or the "Truth and Lies" essay, she has novel and arresting things
to say. This also extends to her appreciation of the figure of the
"sovereign individual" in GM, which provides one of
the best readings of GM II:1-2 I have come across in
the recent literature. As she notes, the promise of the sovereign
individual has traditionally been understood either as
antipolitical or as nonpolitical with the emphasis on individual
perfectionism. Contra these readings, Lemm seeks to show that in
the figure of the sovereign individual Nietzsche provides an idea
of freedom (as responsibility) that intimately concerns the
political life of human animals. For her the primary feature of
human development is the antagonism and agonism between human and
animal life forces. The restoration of animality to humanity is
liberating: "When humankind defines itself against its animality or
denies its animality a productive role, forms of political life
emerge based on domination and exploitation of humans by humans"
(5). One of the striking features of...

You must be logged in through an institution that subscribes to this journal or book to access the full text.

Shibboleth

Shibboleth authentication is only available to registered institutions.

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.